Editor
The writer hails from County Antrim and has lived in the desert southwest of the United States for over 20 years. Her blog is her virtual home away from home.
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Aging, Art, Children's Books, Coming of age, Death of parent, Education, Fatherless daughters, learning to drive, Memoir, Milestones, Mother Daughter Relationship, Mr. Jones, Poetry, Rituals, The Gone of You
just walk away – remembering her last first day of school
WALKING AWAY – Cecil Day Lewis It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day – A sunny day with leaves just turning, The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play Your first game of football, then, like a satellite Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away Behind a scatter of boys. I can see You walking away from…
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Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Cadillac Ranch, Coming of age, Drive All Night, The Price You Pay, The River, The River Tour 2016
independence day again
It’s Independence Day, and I’m thinking about fireworks, the kind that exploded into the sky over Slane Castle on a summer evening in 1985 when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were making their Irish debut. Close to 100,000 of us made the pilgrimage through the sleepy – and disapproving – village of Slane to see The Boss. Between assurances…
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Act Two, Castledawson, Family, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, Mother's Day, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, Poetry, Rites of passage, Rituals, Seamus Heaney
and still we dance . . . happy mother’s day
In Ireland, it is Mother’s Day and it is also still impossible to visit my mother and the place that made her. A phone call later will help minimize the miles between Castledawson and a village in Mexico, me falling easily back into the comforting colloquialisms of home, but it won’t be the same as surprising her the way I used…
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Dispatches from the Diaspora, Friendship, Happy New Year, Milestones, saying goodbye, Seamus Heaney, Starting over, Ted Kooser, Time
Facing the Ice on New Year’s Eve . . .
Dangerous pavements. But I face the ice this year With my father’s stick. ~ Seamus Heaney On New Year’s Eve, a year ago, Chinese health officials confirmed an outbreak of a new virus causing pneumonia-like clusters in Wuhan city. Since then – as we all now know – the virus has spread to nearly every country, killing over 1.8 million…
